Marc Michelotti, age 10, of Barrington, Illinois, for his question:

Do eyeballs grow?

A baby's eyes look rather big for the rest of him. This is because his eyeballs are just about as big as they will ever be. True, the eyes of an infant are not well organized, as yet. Things look blurry and naturally he cannot figure out one shape from another. What's more, he is bewildered by such things as near and far.

However, a baby is born with all the parts of his eye in their proper places and his grown up sized eyeballs are all ready to learn. Naturally, he learns to recognize what he sees from experience. He learns about shapes by touching his toys and other things that he tries to hold in his dear little hands. With practice, he learns about distance every time you bend down your face to kiss him. These and other experiences help the parts of his eyes to get organized to see things as they really are.